Government Redress

Starting in the 1990’s international efforts on addressing past racial injustices began to focus explicitly on atoning for wrongdoing at the local level.  Concurrently with this global trend, U.S. activists and occasionally governments and institutions began to develop similar policies of redress. These redress efforts allowed for the exploration of universal rights at the local level and built a space for redress by pointedly addressing the needs of those wronged. 

In 2020, the tragic loss of George Floyd and numerous other incidents of police brutality alongside the disproportionate COVID-19 impact against Black people in the United States led to a heightened global response to racial injustices. These occurrences were an impetus for another transformation within the field of racial redress. In 2021, the UN created the Permanent Forum of People of African Descent and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) unanimously passed Human Rights Council resolution 43/1, Promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Africans and of people of African descent. Nationally, municipalities began to be accountable for historical racial injustices such as the passage of housing reparations in Evanston, Illinois for historical discriminatory zoning policies between 1920-1950. 

Below we’ve complied a representation of various state and city reparation ordinances over the past several decades.